


Quietly Kept

by salishseaselkie



Series: From Within Our Broken Hearts [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Curiosity, Established Relationship, F/M, Gossip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5784082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salishseaselkie/pseuds/salishseaselkie





	Quietly Kept

It was all over Skyhold. Whispers in the barracks. Murmuring in the main hall. Even the kitchen staff talked about it. “I saw him grab her bum the other day. Can you believe that?” Fran was always the gossip. Old Bertrand disagreed, as he always did.

“The captain, grabbing the Herald’s cousin’s arse? Give over. That is wild fantasy, that is.” Little Jilly, who saw more than most, and said less, spoke up.

She whispered in her own soft voice, “I thought I saw her slip him a kiss one night, when I brought her dinner. I don’t think it was a goodnight kiss either. Then again, I could be mistaken.” Bertrand only snorted.

“It ain’t proper, that. A mason’s son and a noblewoman? Not possible.” But they all knew, somehow, that it was.

The soldiers knew better: they’d seen them fighting together. Seen them worry over each other when they were sent out on patrol. They’d seen him shield her, watched her take a bear’s sweeping claws for him, and more than once, seen them tending to each other’s wounds.

Ella, his lieutenant, said nothing when questioned, only “The captain’s business is his own.” But when she did, she smiled a little, and the others wondered what she really knew.

Commander Cullen rarely spoke on personal matters of his men, and was especially curt when asked about the pair. “If you have enough time to be digging into the private affairs of others, you certainly have time to run another drill. Forty paces at the target range, and if you miss another target like you did last week, I’ll send you to the Mire for team-building. Now _get out of my office_.” Of course, it was rare that anyone would ask the Commander, and certainly everyone knew better than to go to his office after dinner, especially when more than one guard had interrupted his _meetings_  with Inquisitor Trevelyan.

No one dared ask them personally: She was stand-offish and sardonic in her own right, strikingly and almost unapproachably beautiful, and some said almost as dangerous as their Spymaster - no one dared mingle with her long who didn’t know her. He was the second-in-command of the Keep’s armies, commander of Griffon Wing Keep, and to be stuck with a command like that, you either had to be very brave or very, very unlucky. Most who knew him were quick to assume the former, judging by his service record and the deep scar across his right cheek, and knew enough of respect that a man like him was worth more than to be the main talk of keep scuttlebutt.

The tavern watched them when they came and went after drills, and they always sat at the same table in the same fashion: leaning back in their own chairs, a foot on the other’s seat, and he would call for spiced ale, some cold meat, bread, and cheese while she called over to a few friends. There they would sit, interloping in each other’s space, reaching across one another, touching each other on the small of the back, on the knees, and sometimes there would be a quick card of the hand through hair, quick enough that no one ever really knew if it had happened. The tavern watched as they moved in each other’s atmosphere like they were one entity, and never had Skyhold been so transfixed on a pair – not even with their own Commander and Inquisitor.

There was a quiet about them, and though they would stay through the rowdiness of the soldiers howling laughter and brawling over lovers and money, no one ever saw them leave. No one paid them mind as they stole small touches, hands beneath shirts and fingers over cheekbones on their way back to their quarters. No one paid mind as they backed into a corner beneath the midnight sky, because they were too impatient to wait for a soft bed in which to strip and bare their love for one another. No one ever caught them – save the once when he left for the Wilds, and she remained – sharing kisses, taking their due from each other, and that was what intrigued many the most. While Commander Cullen and Inquisitor Trevelyan ignored the onlookers as they tasted each other on the ramparts, the other two enjoyed the shroud of clandestine shadows, and while it was plain as day that they were enamored, no one could ever say they had witnessed what would otherwise be the obvious love affair of Knight-Captain Rylen and Lady Esther.


End file.
